David is an American living in 1950's Paris. His girlfriend Hella has decided to go away on a trip alone to give herself time and space to decide if a future with David is what she really wants. Whilst she is away David finds himself flirting with a lively and attractive Italian barman Giovanni, and quickly slips deeply into a love affair with him, even moving into Giovanni's tiny one room flat. Their passion, always has an unanswered question lingering behind it - what happens when his girlfriend Hella returns? David, though he loves Giovanni, experiences grave doubts too. There is something in the chaotic shambles with which Giovanni inhabits this room, that suggests a mess of self-tortured psychology beneath, which he finds unsettles him. So when Hella does return all ready to commit to David. He finds himself craving emotional stability, so he agrees to marry her. But his affair with Giovanni and his own guilt ridden conflicted emotions, are not so easily put aside. And when Giovanni is arrested for murder, the whole situation descends into an explosive tragedy, where nothing can now ever be held hidden and secret.
Giovanni's Room, was Baldwin's second novel. Following on from his fine debut Go Tell It On The Mountains, where he'd attempted to lay to rest his challenging upbringing with his preacher step-father. Giovanni's Room, is not so obviously autobiographical in its details, but does draw on Baldwin's own experience of living in Paris, where he sought freedom from the oppressive nature of Post War America. And Paris in the novel is full of ex-pats from a variety of countries, seeking the solace of being fully themselves whilst abroad, in the bars and cafes of Parisian nightlife. Open minded and laissez faire, Paris attracts all types, the lost, the oppressed, the fun lovers, the nefarious, all sucked into the melting pot of its backstreets.
As a novel Giovanni's Room is quite an ambitious leap forward from his debut. It might then seem a peculiar response to us now, that Baldwin's choice to write a novel about a white American's experiences in Paris, was considered controversial. A negro writer, it was thought ought to write about his own kind, and it was considered nothing short of arrogance on Baldwin's part. But for Baldwin sexual and racial politics were born of the same poisoned root, so why shouldn't he write in this way? His publisher's wanted him to re-write Giovanni's Room, change the title, change the race, gender and sexuality etc, so in the end he took it to a smaller book publisher who was prepared to publish it exactly as written.
Giovanni's Room is such an exciting, invigorating novel to read. On the simple level of his sentence structures and mastery of dialogue, James Baldwin is in complete possession of his craft, the meaning and directional purpose of his story. After reading a few modern novels that left me bored and quite a bit nonplussed, I was blown away by Baldwin's sheer verve that leaps at you off the page. I truly was impressed. It may of course be that I've been living in a desert, and the moment it rained all the dried up seeds germinated and bloomed, all at once. But Baldwin's literary ability is undoubtedly on fire in this book.
His powers of description is impressive too, capturing the personality of even a walk on character in one paragraph, that you'll never see ever again. as he's not remotely central to the story. You get the impression this was someone Baldwin actually met. You so know and recognise the type of person he is showing you. As this character walks into the bar and towards you its unclear what the sex of this individual is until the very last sentence. It communicates to you the sort of bar this is, its a bar frequented by every conceivable variety of queer.
'It looked like a mummy or a zombie - this was the first, overwhelming impression - of something walking after it had been put to death. And it walked, really, like someone who might be sleepwalking or like those figures in slow motion one sometimes sees on the screen. it carried a glass, it walked on its toes, the flat hips moved with a dead, horrifying lasciviousness. It seemed to make no sound; this was due to the roar of the bar, which was like the roaring of the sea, heard at night, from far away. it glittered in the dim light; the thin, black hair was violent with oil, combed forward, hanging in bangs, the eyelids gleamed with mascara, the mouth raged with lipstick. The face was white and thoroughly bloodless with some kind of foundation cream; it stank of powder and a gardenia like perfume. The shirt, open coquettishly to the navel, revealed a hairless chest and a silver crucifix; the shirt was covered with round, paper-thin wafers, red and green and orange and blue, which stormed in the light and made one feel that the mummy might, at any moment, disappear in flame. A red sash was around the waist, the clinging pants were a surprisingly somber grey. He wore buckles on his shoes.'
I mean, that is a masterly piece of writing. Its the sort of thing that makes me want to clap my campy hands in delight, and applaud. The prose is so gorgeously ripe with these telling details. Baldwin's dialogue is often formed of these short snappy elements, the bouncing back and forth of often witty repartee, in snap shots. Some have criticised him for placing words into characters mouths that no ordinary person would ever ,in that manner, express themselves. And though there are incidences in Giovanni's Room where you can hear the authorial voice, of a Baldwin oration, very distinctly, it is just such a delight to read intelligently written dialogue with a sense of its purpose I can forgive him his self indulgence. Its entirely worth it. And besides, the guy is just showing off his well polished wares. I can't recommend this novel highly enough, it is utterly brilliant.
CARROT REVIEW - 8/8
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